Are Democratic States Perceived As More Legitimate By Their Citizens? a Cross-National Analysis of Democracy and Subjective Legitimacy

Although democratic polities are often considered a normatively legitimate form of government, do their citizens actually regard their states as more legitimate than do citizens of less democratic countries? Drawing upon the World Values Survey and other data sources, I conduct a cross-national statistical test of this question. The analysis suggests that they do not, and aside from all but the strongest democracies, citizens in more democratic countries tend, on average, to view their state as less legitimate. This finding holds across different measures of democracy, across country GDP categories and in the presence of a variety of controls, including a measure of democratic transitions. Moreover, with the exception of strong democracies, level of democracy is among the most influential cross-national predictors of perceived state legitimacy, surpassing the importance of other variables such as ethno-political exclusion, GDP per capita and income inequality. The results suggest that, while democracies may be an inherently desirable form of government (i.e. they may be considered to enjoy relatively higher levels of normative legitimacy), more democratic states do not necessarily enjoy comparatively higher levels of subjective legitimacy.